25¢ WfJlillEliS "II"'(Jllli'·~X'623 No. 503 1 June 1990 Polish Rail Strike Challenges Solidarnosc "Shock Treatment" goods to and from the whole of north­ As we go to- press, it is reported western Poland to the central port of that the Polish rail strikers have Szczecin are shut down tight as a drum, suspended their strike for two weeks. as a wildcat railway strike centered on However, none of the issues have the town of Slupsk some 200 kilometers been resolved. The New York Times from here enters its second week. Now (29 May) headlines, "Walesa Settles Gdynia, the second-largest port, is also a Rail Strike, but the Workers shut down. Remain Discontented." Also on Tuesday, the Ligue Trot­ This is the first serious working-class skyste de France demonstrated out­ response to the Mazowiecki govern­ side the LOT Airlines office in soli­ ment's brutal capitalist austerity poli­ darity with the rail strikers during cies, which have lowered real wages the visit of Polish prime minister by 40 percent and produced mass Mazowiecki to Paris. Our French unemployment in Poland for the first comrades carried signs declaring time in four decades. The biggest "IMF Bleeds the Working Class from challenge yet to the Solidarnosc-led Poland to South Africa," and "The government's "shock treatment" is elec­ Workers Must Fight Capitalist Res­ trifying the country. And the rever­ toration in Poland, the, DDR and berations will be felt from the Tyumen USSR!" oil fields and Kuzbass coal mines in Siberia to East German factories, as well as in the capitalist West. SZCZECIN, Poland, May 26-This is Skarzynski/AFP the biggest and busiest port in Poland. The rail strike committees are inde­ Polish workers rebel against wage-cutting, job-slashing plans ordered by But not for the last three days. The nor­ pendent of both Solidarnosc and the the IMF and imposed by pro-capitalist Solidarnosc government. Above, mally teeming railyards which take continued on page 11 Silesian miners strike in January. Behind the Washington Summit mperia isis ear or or ae ev's urVlva• In recent years, the periodic summit meetings between the commander in chief of U.S. imperialism and the head of the Soviet Stalinist bureaucracy have been dull, predictable displays of diplo­ matic hot air-glorified photo ops. Anti­ Communist rhetoric on the American side combined with joint declarations on the sanctity of world peace. And then all the "arms control" hokum-so many sea­ launched cruise missiles as against so many ICBMs. However, this summit meeting takes place at a pivotal moment in contem­ porary history. The Western rulers be­ lieve they have won the Cold War hands down, reversing the victory of the Red Army over Nazi Germany in World War II. The postwar division of Eu­ rope between the American- and Soviet­ Downing/Newsweek dominated spheres, which was negotiated Bush tries to prop up Gorbachev's at the Yalta and Potsdam summit meet­ crumbling authority. Right: Soviet ings, is now crumbling. The Frankfurt leader with Tyumen oil field workers bankers and Ruhr industrialists, backed in 1985. This spring they ousted local by the U.S. and other NATO powers, are CP bureaucrats, now threaten strike. driving to create a Fourth Reich by buy­ ing out East Germany. Kremlin bureaucracy is collapsing from into the Soviet economy under the watch­ West German foreign minister Hans­ Yet the NATO powers have not defeat-, the top down. The "liberal" Stalinist word of perestroika (restructuring). Dietrich Genscher put it: "The ambitious ed the Russians in a war. The Soviet regime of Mikhail Gorbachev is giving Hence Gorbachev's political survival goals we have set before u~ can only be Union remains a military superpower up East Europe, has agreed to the imperi­ has become a prime concern for the achieved with the success of Gorbachev's with 300,000 combat-ready troops still alist reunification of Germany and is masters of Wall Street and Washington, proposals for change in the Soviet stationed in East Germany. Rathert.the introducing large elements of capitalism and their European NATO allies. As contiriued on page 4 Days later, a supporter sent a copy of an article featuring an interview with Alberta Africa, MOVE's Naturalist Minister. Her response?<"Blood money." ~'We don't give adamn aboutt,ij~t money. We want members of our family home," th~ ubiquitous revolu­ tionary stated (Philadelphia Inqtarer, 14 March). I was cheered by her words, and the depth of her commitment. City of Brotherly Love She forthrightly pointed to the inherent historic injustice in the situation, where this system's police kill Blacks, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans and the poor .Gives Up Blood Money with impunity, only to cough up a few bucks. of other people's money in a macabre form of "settlement." But let those folks dare to defend themselves "The system will point guns at people and say tards who did that on Death Row?!? This foul system against the system, and they face suffering, pain and that it is in defense of the system, people can can easily come up with money, 'cuz all they gotta death. point guns at the system and it is seen as wrong, do is use folks' taxes! It ain't nothin' to them! If it How much money does it take to "settle" mass leading people to believe that when the system was us who did it, we'd be dead or on Death Row! murder? points guns at people it is in the right of defense All this system did was steal otha folks' money, their 15 April 1990 but when folks point guns at the system it is in taxes, to settle the suit-you ain't see nobody go to defense of nothing, and y'all will tell people in jail-but 'Mona Africa-did you?!?" court and out that there is no defense for this Stung by the unexpected outburst, Smokey cor­ kind of conduct, and lock folks up to make rected my initial impression, "Naw, man. I ain't Mumia Abu-Jamal, a Philadelphia black journal­ your point daily for conduct that is influenced, sayin' it mean nothing, I'm just checkin' to make sure ist, is on death row at Pennsylvania's Huntingdon boasted, flaunted by the system daily...." you seen it!" state prison. Framed up because of his political -John Africa, MOVE founder I saw it, and the hand of injustice behind it that views, Mumia faces death for his defiance of the When news reports hit Huntingdon Prison recently reduces the brilliance of life to the stagnation of green racist, capitalist order. His columns appear periodi­ of the multi-million dollar city settlement of civil paper, that equates the miraculous with the mundane, cally in Workers Vanguard and other newspapers. suits stemming from the May 13th, 1985 massacre indeed the sacred with the profane. To get involved in the fight to save Mumia of MOVE members in Philadelphia, some inmates I explained to the brother that MOVE "ain't into" Abu-Jamal and abolish the death penalty, contact reacted with praise. money. the Partisan Defense Committee, P.O. Box 99, "Hey, Mut You hear bouta $2.5 million MOVE I thought of those kids, so alive with life they Canal Street Station, New York, NY 10013. If settlement, man? That's somethin, ain't it, man?" glowed; of Nick, Tree, 'Rad, the remarkable people you wish to correspond with Mumia, you can The writer reacted crossly, "That ain't shit, man! who pumped life into a remarkable teaching-the write to: Mumia Abu-Jamal, AM8335, Drawer R, It ain't nothin ' but blood money! Why ain't the bas- teaching of John Africa. Huntingdon, PA 16652. Trotsky on the Fate Pil.rti8aau Defeu§e ofthe Soviet Union In the Soviet Union and throughout East £o......ittee Europe, the starkly posed alternatives are workers political revolution or capitalist counterrevolution. More than 50 years ago, Leon Trotsky analyzed Stalin's bureaucratic regime as a parasitic caste resting atop the gains ofthe October Revolution. He laid out how it would shatter, with different elemenis Stop Medical Torture TROTSKY propelled into the opposing camps ofrevolu- LENIN tion andreaction. As the Stalinist bureaucra- cies disintegrate from the top, the working class has not yet taken a decisive role. Latter­ day "vulgar democrats" have enthused over any and all "anti-Stalinism,' not least Polish of Dr. Alan Berkman! Solidarnosc. But today in Poland the working class has begun tofight the counterrevolu­ tionary Solidarnosc leadership in a desperate struggle to survive. This makes all the more For 20 years, Dr. Alan Berkman, urgent the construction ofan internationalist Leninist-Trotskyist vanguard. 44, gave his medical services to the Will the bureaucrat devour the workers' state, or will the working class clean poor, oppressed and those in struggle up the bureaucrat? Thus stands the question upon whose decision hangs the fate of against their oppressors. From the upris­ ings at New York's Attica prison to the the Soviet Union. The vast majority of the Soviet workers are even now hostile to the bureaucracy. The peasant masses hate them with their healthy plebeian hatred. Wounded Knee IiIdian reservation in South Dakota Dr. Berkman was there to If in contrast to the peasants the workers have almost never come out on the care for the victims of racist state terror. road of open struggle, thus condemning the protesting villages to confusion and Today, he lies in a Washington, D.C. jail, impotence, this is not only because of the repressions. The workers fear lest, in throwing out the bureaucracy, they will open the way for a capitalist restoration.